God, Government and the Marriage Question

Joseph Laconte

When the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled last November that homosexuals should have the right to marry, the Human Rights Campaign, a gay-rights group, claimed that the decision had nothing to do with religion. Rather, the organization said, "it's about the civil responsibilities and protections afforded through a government-issued civil marriage license."

But of course the fight over gay marriage has, at its heart, a religious question. It presupposes that there's something in human nature that either upholds or contradicts the notion of homosexual unions. The political fixation on civil rights overlooks the more basic argument over natural rights: One side believes that the Deity, quite deliberately, designed male and female for one another. The other sees loving relationships among gays as both a gift and an expression of Divine love. To paraphrase Albert Einstein, it's the idea that God does not play dice with human sexuality-and neither should the government.

That's why the marriage debate is, to a large extent, a contest over the role of faith in public life. Both sides of this debate want government to endorse what is, essentially, a religious view of the human condition.